


Vainglorious

by autoschediastic



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII (Video Game 1997)
Genre: Gen, Origin Story, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-01
Updated: 2020-12-01
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:02:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27823432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/autoschediastic/pseuds/autoschediastic
Summary: Rufus goes missing. The Turks go to work. A shameless excuse to wallow in the lives of corporate spooks.The Department of Administrative Research occupied a nondescript corner of the tenth floor. Reception was fully automated due to budget cuts. Visitors were infrequent and inevitably left within minutes, unnerved by the aggressive silence.
Relationships: Reno/Tseng (Compilation of FFVII), Rude/Rufus Shinra, Rufus Shinra & Rude, Rufus Shinra & The Turks, Tseng & Reno
Kudos: 26





	Vainglorious

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to [FeoRune](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FeoRune/pseuds/FeoRune) for their guinea pig beta!

* * *

Midgar didn’t have seasons.

The reactors powering the city trapped it in a perpetual type of summer. Not one of the summer sun carried on an ocean breeze, or the soft still twilight in a forest thick. Midgar’s warmth was blood, metallic and cloying.

Reno stood with arms folded on the chest-high railing of the President’s Walk, a pretentious boulevard that circled the edges of the plate where citizens could gawp at the ugliness of the outside world. 

Twenty miles from the city’s outer wall, knife edge ice glinted in the sun. At ten miles out, the ground first grew soggy and then to sucking mud the colour of an old bruise. At two, it dried out to a ring of cracked hardpan lips stretched scream thin with the city a blackened tongue at its center. 

For the people who could see over them, the walls were a blessing to give thanks for every day. What Reno felt, gazing out over the wastes, wasn’t gratitude. 

A shadow cut from shared cloth fell in beside him.

“Yo, boss.”

“Reno,” said Tseng. 

Reno lifted the m-stick caught between his middle and forefingers. It cast his skin in an eerie deepwater glow. 

Double ems, another name for the sticks Turks used to exchange data, were thumb-sized blocks of refined mako. Unlike materia, their crystallisation was incomplete, which allowed the information contained within to be easily modified. The sticks themselves were a putty-like consistency enclosed in a transparent rubber case. Each had a finite life; when the mako inside solidified, whatever was on it became permanent. 

At that stage, they were both useless and a liability. Dropping it into raw mako solved the issue. 

Tseng tucked the m-stick inside his jacket. “The thief?”

“Sittin’ pretty at the bottom of a sewer pipe.” Reno smiled to show his teeth. “Maybe not so pretty.”

“Any indication that he was involved?”

He, Reno knew, could mean any one of a number of people. Knowing which depended on interpreting the miserly shifts in Tseng’s tone. 

“Too sloppy.” Reno had killed time chewing on the cud of their options. “Our friend with the sticky fingers didn’t have much to say, so figure I read between the lines.”

“You’re certain?”

“Sure as shit.” Reno pulled out a battered carton and tapped a cigarette free. He wasn’t a nervous man by nature, only circumstance. “Except for how sure as shit I am coulda been the point.”

Eyes on the horizon, Tseng nodded. Not many within the company were aware the Vice President favoured such ploys. It was unfortunate matching the list of those that did with likely suspects eliminated none, which in turn forced Tseng to consider some sort of double blind. 

“A troubling possibility,” he decided.

“Eh.” Reno savoured the first salacious draw, his eyes heavy. “Wouldn’t bet my gil on it. Yours, maybe.”

While Tseng understood the need for vices and cultivated several of his own, he disliked this one of Reno’s. Ether-laced pahsana leaves were a habit preferable to diamond dust, something he knew Reno dabbled in but never developed a passion for, not because of misguided moral superiority, but because the smoke lingered sourly in Reno’s sweat. 

The smoke that curled from between Reno’s lips then was not sharp and stinging, but vaguely sweet and light, with a darker hint of musk. 

“Malboros,” Tseng read curiously from the pack.

Reno’s grin flashed behind lazily curled fingers. “Nobody ever kicked it from bad breath alone.”

“No,” Tseng said, his smile small and ungrudging. “I suppose not.” 

Reno flicked his battered lighter open and shut, open and shut. A kalm fang’s shrill laugh ricocheted off the wall. 

“It would seem we have much to think about,” Tseng said.

“Yeah, and none of it good. Gotta admit, I worry some about public safety.” 

Slouched against the wall, hip cocked and chin tilted upward as he smoked, Reno didn’t look worried. 

Reno rarely looked as he felt. Tseng made a private game of prying Reno’s true mood out from under the appearance of one, the challenge in doing so without Reno’s knowledge justified to his conscience as necessity. 

He didn’t believe it. What he did believe was truth existed outside of conviction, and so he happily arrived at the conclusion that neither mattered. 

“You don’t?” Reno asked.

“Worry,” Tseng said carefully, “is not entirely accurate. Let us say I have an awareness.”

Understanding that to mean the plan was to watch and wait, Reno scowled. “Fuckin’ hate waiting.”

“What would you suggest?”

Reno would like to suggest an accident. A tragic and unavoidable accident, followed by a solemn procession of toy soldiers along Sector 0’s Kugane Avenue to mark the Director of Public Security’s regretful passing into the lifestream. That would just about make his day.

Tseng would veto it without a second thought not because of the potential risks, but because Heidegger was a known variable. Remove him, and an unknown would take his place. 

Thinking of variables both known and not, Reno asked, “Been to Junon lately? I hear it’s nice this time of year.”

Tseng’s brow lifted. 

Often labelled jaded, Tseng was merely adaptable. Steady and reliable, he was an excellent candidate to infiltrate Shinra on behalf of his annexed homeland. What he discovered in the Department of Administrative Research was exactly what he had been sent to find. 

Unpatriotic and indifferent, Tseng was a dismal Wutai operative.

“The enemy of my enemy, Reno?”

“Fight fire with fire, turn about’s fair play, all that jazz.”

“You’re full of cliches today, I see.”

Reno caught Tseng’s eye. More information was the smarter play; standing around until it meandered their way wasn’t. Bringing the Vice President back to the city would rattle everybody’s cage. 

He flicked the butt of his smoke out over the railing and watched it fall.

* * *

Officially, the seventy-story global headquarters of the Shinra Electric Power Company was known as simply the Shinra Building. Unofficially, the Shinra Building stopped at floor fifty-eight. The Tower began at fifty-nine.

The Tower’s executive conference room served firstly as a capacious and ostentatious display of power, and secondly as a place to confer. 

The president and his two aides, along with the five division heads and the seven employees who served directly under them, sat gathered at one end of the table. 

“How much will it impact No. 3 reactor output?” President Shinra interrupted. 

Reeve hesitated. “We’ll see a marginal drop through weeks three to eleven, but given the damage to the moderator reservoir—”

“Your original timeframe was half that.” 

“Sir, consider the potentially catastrophic long-term effects on the surrounding bedrock.” 

Tseng stood two paces back and to the left of Heidegger as ordered. The deliberate slight to his rank made some of his peers uncomfortable. Others resented it. None fully understood it. 

Unlike many facets of the company, Shinra’s corporate organizational chart was straightforward and for the most part hierarchical. When Heidegger created the Department of Administrative Research inside the Public Security Division, he created an outlier. Nowhere else did the company have a department head serving alongside a divisional one. 

Tseng suspected Heidegger had assumed anyone in his position wouldn’t care to exercise the power that came with it or have the balls to do so. On paper, he answered to the president. In public, to Heidegger. 

In practice, he answered only to himself. 

“How much, Tuesti.”

“Seven percent,” Reeve said, regretfully sealing the project’s fate. As head of urban planning for a city already abandoned by its creator, his heart frequently bled.

Hojo smirked. “Your model is flawed.”

“My model is based on reality.”

“Our present reality,” the president corrected. “This company is built on tomorrow’s.”

A rousing catchphrase, Tseng thought. Charisma had never been what Shinra lacked.

As Scarlet launched into a lustful recounting of the Sister Ray project, Tseng’s phone signalled an incoming message. He read and deleted it, then silently headed for the door. 

He turned back smoothly at Heidegger’s red-faced bellow. “Forgive me, Mr. President. I did not wish to interrupt.” 

Shinra waved a lofty hand and continued his avid study of the assets Scarlet presented. Heidegger scowled. Tseng slipped through the door.

“Sir,” said Elena, falling in to match his stride. “We received confirmation of their arrival. The car was found dumped at the Glaret-Wendell crossing in the Garden District. It looks like someone ran it off the road.”

“Cross reference who knew we were moving him with whomever would want to know. Pull funding as needed and don’t waste time on rebalancing.” The risk of Heidegger reviewing the accounts before they could handle redistribution was marginal. “Reno and I will attempt to track from the scene. Message me anything pertinent if someone requires a personal visit.”

“Understood.” Elena punched in the elevator override. Seconds later, confused faces peered out into the hall. 

A young woman made the connection first. Her eyes wide but voice steady, she hustled her more slow-witted coworkers along. 

“Thank you,” Tseng said politely as he and Elena took their place. “We apologize for the inconvenience. Have a pleasant day.”

The doors closed. After a moment’s consideration, Elena said, “I think it’s worse when you do that, sir.”

The rank and file had little knowledge and much hearsay of the Tower’s goings-on. With few exceptions, those who worked on the upper floors were confined to their relevant section only. 

The Turks had become a visible presence under Tseng’s control. 

“I know,” Tseng said, and folded his hands at the small of his back.

* * *

The Department of Administrative Research occupied a nondescript corner of the tenth floor. Reception was fully automated due to budget cuts. Visitors were infrequent and inevitably left within minutes, unnerved by the aggressive silence and the three outdated, clearly untouched magazines set at precise right-angles on the table beside a single chair.

The neat line of voice memo cubes on the vacant desk saw more use than the chair, and were programmed to wipe at midnight. 

The janitorial staff might have noticed something amiss. No one mentioned it, and no one was reprimanded for unscheduled breaks. 

This suited everyone just fine.

* * *

Midgar, Rufus thought, was as steady and changeable as the moon.

Naked to the waist, he studied the swollen red welts on his wrist. The men who had snatched them off the street had used surprisingly soft rope, but twist anything hard enough and it showed teeth. 

“Nice place,” Rude said, stepping into his slacks. “Homey.”

Rufus shifted his scrutiny to the Wutaian carpet laid raw-edged over the rough concrete floor. His bare feet were chilled despite its plush thickness. 

Their clothes had been laid neatly across the sectional sofa arranged with two club chairs around a low conversation table. A short distance to their right sat a dining set to seat six; further to their left was a large bed heaped with sumptuous pillows, a stand-alone wardrobe, and a painted dressing screen. 

Half a dozen lamps illuminated their island of comfort in a sea of black. At its very edge, two squat walls connected at a right angle gave a makeshift bathroom the illusion of privacy. 

“I have little hope for housekeeping,” Rufus said.

The surrounding nothing swallowed Rude’s gravel-slide chuckle. He left his shirt unbuttoned and picked up Rufus’s with a critical eye. Shaking the wrinkles free, he held it up for Rufus to slide into and smoothed it across his shoulders. 

Carefully, Rude folded the cuffs back from injured skin. His hands were large and warm as he took hold of Rufus’s forearm and hand to gently manipulate the joint. 

Rufus’s brows lifted. “Am I cleared to finish dressing, or would you like to continue?”

Rude’s eyes were no easier to read without his sunglasses. Kidnapped at gunpoint and forcibly stripped searched was not high on his list of bonding opportunities. 

A voice called caution through the dark. Rufus swivelled to face it from behind the sudden shield of Rude’s bulk. 

A man built of averages stepped into the light. Mid-forties give or take a decade, broad-faced with greying, muddy brown hair. “My sincerest apologies for the discourteous treatment,” he said in pre-recorded monotone. “I’m sure you understand the necessity.”

Rufus said, “You have my understanding,” and the man nodded as if it were neither more nor less than he expected. 

He held out a hand. “Please, be seated. We have much to discuss.”

“How wonderful for you to think so.”

“Despite the circumstances, I’d hoped we could be civil.”

“Civil,” Rufus said, “is an invitation, not a demand.” He sank into a chair as if overcome by an unbearable boredom, the inherent dichotomy of a gilded cage wasted on a man chained by privilege. “If that will be all?”

“My name is Gale,” the man lied. “There is nothing else in this room than what you see, though you’re of course free to confirm that for yourselves.” He smiled. Absolute darkness reigned where the lamplight ended. “Your privacy will not be further violated. I’ll have a meal sent in for you and your man. You must be tired from your travel.”

Gale left. Rufus looked at Rude.

“Well,” he said, “are you my man?”

* * *

Uniformed school children trudged in single file along the crushed stone walk. Faux wood signs pointing this way to the Vegetable Patch, that way to the Paddy Fields swamped in the heat and noise of traffic struggled to be quaint.

Cavernous warehouses housed acres of anemic soil force fed by submerged mako lines. Workers carried fussily beeping monitors and wore filtration masks at harvest time. 

The Garden District was a pretty name for an ugly truth. 

“You ever wonder,” Reno said.

Tseng didn’t look at the rows upon rows of identical perfect produce on display. “I endeavour not to.”

“Yeah,” Reno said slowly, “probably better that way.” 

Through a twisting alleyway, past massive tanks smelling of methane, they came upon a sleek black town car scarred and pitted on the driver’s side. Reno stuck his head through the open window. 

“They vacuum this thing before dumping it or what,” he muttered. 

They searched the car methodically and found less than nothing. What was missing—clutch piece under the front passenger seat, radio in the glovebox, spares of each from the trunk—said more than Tseng wanted to hear. 

Sizing up the damage, Reno figured it had to be something big with somebody mean behind the wheel to come at Rude more than once. He ran his fingers along the ridges and valleys gouged into the paint. 

The sharp breeze funneled through the gaps between warehouses tugged at his hair as he stepped back, arms folded. “It ain’t right.”

“No,” Tseng agreed, “it isn’t.”

“Should be messier.”

“It should.”

“The fuck are we gonna do now? Don’t you dare tell me to stick a thumb up my ass and wait.”

“We have too many options,” Tseng said. “We can safely assume whoever orchestrated this has access to inside information. If Rude suspected the same, stripping the car and dumping it would be one of his first moves.”

“He would’ve made his second move by now. We got radio silence, boss.”

“So we assume he can’t.

“We won’t find anything more here.” Tseng pulled out his phone. “Go help Elena.”

“Where you going?”

The list of plausible reasons why they hadn’t heard from Rude is short. 

“To find something more.”

* * *

A lot of people didn’t like the way materia felt, not throbbing like a pulse in their hands or quivering against their skin, and especially not the way it slithered into their brains, carved out neural pathways that ached like being fucked when activated but went cold and hollow in the aftermath.

Reno liked the honesty of it all 

“I’ll never get used to it,” Elena said, digging at her eyes with the palms of her hands. “Who even came up with this idea?”

“Dunno,” Reno lied. “But you gotta admit the perks.” He fanned out a stack of files. “Anybody sees this shit, they ain’t gonna know what to think.”

The Department’s offices were on the tenth floor; the Turks worked in three rooms on B5. One room, barely used, sat behind a reinforced steel door. Another, frequently visited, housed a dozen or so filling cabinets, which in turn housed blank folders full of blank paper. This one, with its utility sink, appropriated furniture, and the smell of stale coffee and old sweat sunk into leather, was home. 

Reno wondered sometimes why Tseng didn’t redirect some funding towards upgrades, and couldn’t be bothered to do it himself. 

“I know what I think,” Elena said.

“Oh yeah?”

“I think we need a few more people who wouldn’t hijack the VP given half the chance.”

“Sounds boring.”

Elena snorted and shoved back her chair. She grabbed Reno’s empty mug along with her own.

Reno closed his eyes. It wasn’t necessary to trigger the modified sense materia embedded in the cuff on his forearm, and it didn’t lessen the vertigo when he opened them again. Black text rose through the faint sepia overlay on the sheet of paper beneath his hand. 

A person might feel powerful sitting on enough information to bring down Shinra’s networks from here to Wutai. Reno didn’t mind it, and he’d come to appreciate the edge more than he resented the work it took to keep it keen. 

But power, he thought, was a lot like a homemade boomer. A handy threat, decent in a pinch, and liable to blow up in your face.

* * *

“You’re angry,” Rufus said.

He reclined comfortably on the couch, wine glass in hand and the bottle within reach. Rude sat opposite in one of the chairs, plate balanced on his knee as he ate, and said nothing.

Rufus had anticipated the anger. What he hadn’t considered was to be so very wrong about its root. Misjudging Heidegger’s puppet department was a habit he couldn’t afford to form. 

Necessity, the mother of invention. Boredom deserved the title more. Without the mind-numbing quantity of it he was subjected to on a daily basis, he most likely wouldn’t have found the interesting cache of sealed files in an obscure subdirectory on the servers allocated to Weapons Development. He almost certainly wouldn’t have expended the effort it took to crack said seal, and if for some reason he had, his response would have mirrored Scarlet’s.

That Heidegger had created the Department of Administrative Research for the sole purpose of skimming funds from his divisional projects was a useful piece of knowledge. That it had originally been staffed by the low-level knee-breakers swept up in periodic campaigns to reassure the public no organised crime would be tolerated in Shinra’s metropolis was slightly less so, but interesting nonetheless. 

That one of these enterprising individuals, with his loud mouth and sloppy suit and complete lack of respect for his own mortality, had neatly corralled former coworkers into half a dozen lucrative channels and established key connections both Plateside and not right beneath Heidegger’s bulbous nose was immensely entertaining. It also presented a unique opportunity. 

Rude didn’t mind being labelled unique, as he had long ago learned that everything his momma said had been bullshit. It was tough to be mad about something that wasn’t true. 

“You think,” Rufus said, “if I had known all of this, why not come to you first. Why not use the knowledge to bribe you into cooperation.”

Rude did think those things. More than that, he thought about Rufus’s choice of a collective noun. 

“You’d be right, of course, if your cooperation was all I wanted.”

“What do you want?”

Rufus leaned intently forward. “Obedience. Loyalty. Trust.”

Why ask for a star when you coveted the sky.

“I’m willing to offer the same in return.”

Rude wiped his mouth with a linen napkin and set his plate on the table. He sat back, fingers laced loosely in his lap. 

“Start with telling me what these guys have on you,” Rude said.

* * *

Reno slouched against a pole, his body swaying with the motion of the train, the rhythmic clack clack clack of steel on steel sweeter than a lullaby.

“Never lived below, did ya?” 

Tseng looked for all the world a typical mid-level manager, exceptionally pretty-faced and his job made easier and harder by turns because of it. People looked twice, looked again. They remembered dark brown eyes so deep it felt like falling into the ocean and a smile that wasn’t a smile, secretive and mesmerizing. 

“My arrangement precluded the necessity,” Tseng said. 

“Right.”

The train careened around a corner. Reno’s hand snapped out to grab the rail above his head. He kept the other firmly in his pocket, hiding knuckles scraped raw and bloody. The potion he grabbed from the ancient machine in a forgotten Sector 3 utility tunnel had tasted like sweet rancid tea and was so slow to kick in he could feel the tiny twitching jerk of new skin filling in the missing chunks. 

Tseng looked up. He knew Reno’s skills and weaknesses, his tolerance level for pain both physical and psychological, the length of his inseam and that nudity in any context was a nonissue unless he actively decided otherwise. He knew every last one of Reno’s blood ties and that Reno couldn’t care less about them not because of some childhood trauma or lingering resentment, but that he simply did not care. None of these were things Reno had told him.

“Do you miss it?” Tseng asked, meaning the trade Reno had taken for one type of freedom in exchange for another. 

“What’s to miss?”

These were the things Tseng could have missed: Smooth worn stone warmed by the sun against bare skin; the perfect sense of contentment in absolute certainty for the future; shared knowledge; tradition for tradition’s sake; scarcity of feeling. 

“I guess,” Reno said, “shit was simpler. It’s not like I had some great ambition or something.” He lifted a shoulder. “Hard to say no to easy money.”

Tseng slanted his head in a silent question. Reno huffed and collapsed into the seat beside him, legs sprawled into the walkway and arm flung out behind Tseng’s neck. 

“I wasn’t lookin’ to make something of myself or anybody else. Buncha knuckleheads. I got bored.”

“Is there such a thing as too easy money, then?”

“Hell nah. It’s just.” Reno tipped his head back against the window, started out at the anemic bursts of murky light. He smelled of fresh sweat and gasoline and someone else’s fear. “I was there, y’know? And it was right in front of me. So I took it.” 

Took it, and handed it over to Tseng without hesitation.

Reno smiled lazily, heavy-lidded in the aftermath. A bruise had begun to purple his jaw. He hadn’t needed to take the hit. Three years out of the slums he still fought fast and dirty and hadn’t lost the knack to dance a fine line between posturing and foolishness. 

The majority of Reno’s confidence came from competency. The rest was pure bullshit. They’ve shared company for long enough now that Tseng could usually tell one from the other. 

When he couldn’t, when Reno took what was fake and made it dazzling and bright and so absolute snake oil shysters would slit their own throats in shame, the distinction ceased to hold any sway. 

“Would’ve gone the same way if you got there first,” Reno said. 

“Not quite.”

“Oh yeah?”

To Tseng, roadmaps were a necessary resource. He felt no compulsion to follow one, but he preferred to know where one path ended and another began, which were well-trod and which veered into the lesser known. He wanted to know not just what lay ahead but to remember from where he had come, where he could go if. _If_. 

Reno would set a map on fire solely for the fun of it and use the flames to find his way. 

“Yes,” Tseng said, and stood. Reno’s gaze dropped to watch as he buttoned his jacket. “We’re here.”

Reno drew in his languid sprawl and flowed unhurriedly into Tseng’s space. He took hold of the overhead bar again, almost nose to nose with his gaze sliding slowly upward a beat behind his body. 

“You’re gonna tell me ‘bout that someday.”

“Some day,” Tseng said, not a promise, just acceptance of the inevitable. He stepped out onto the platform for Sector 3, Station 7 and slipped into the crowd while Reno fanned left and kept pace as if tethered, submerged in the chaos but not of it, unshakeable in the spaces between.

* * *

Rude wasn’t so crass as to voice his satisfaction. He wasn’t so charitable as to hide it, either.

“That,” Rufus said, “is less than ideal.”

Rufus’s reputation as a trust fund playboy with an explosive temper was well-earned. Fictions rooted in reality were the easiest to maintain, and he quickly learned the more sensational the story, the better cover it provided. His outbursts became strategic and targeted and served to distract from a developing shrewdness.

Masterminding his own kidnapping through a faction inside the company researching alternative energy sources had been a challenging but tidy piece of work. 

“You honestly mean to tell me you have no way of contacting them without a phone or a radio.”

“Not reliably.” 

Rufus drummed his fingertips irritably against his thigh. “No drop points? Pre-arranged rendezvous?”

“If I could get to one of those, I could get to a phone.”

They stared flatly at one another. Rufus relented first, shoving to his feet. His preferred scenario included some sort of communication with the outside, but it was by no means his only. “I’m afraid we may be detained longer than anticipated.”

He might have gained access to the schematics he desired simply by handing the faction over to Heidegger. More likely, his father would have both them and the minds behind them immediately destroyed, and proceed to interrogate Rufus on how he obtained his information, what did he mean to do with the technology, in what ways could this like everything else he had ever wanted be twisted to hurt him. 

That he planned to use the faction’s knowledge pool against his father was true enough. But he would do so in his own time in his own way, not theirs.

* * *

The slums reeked.

Sewage and body order lingered, but in the bouquet of scents beneath the plate, they were the least offensive. Hot metal, stagnant mud, and food a week past edible dominated. Near the outskirts of where people lived huddled together, the funk of drake burrows and rotting hedgehog pie carcasses took over. 

Over it all sat the miasma of processed mako. 

Reno breathed shallowly through his mouth. He perched on the corroded sheet of metal that used to be somebody’s roof and watched for movement between the rattling scrap heaps sinking at an inch a week into a quagmire of contaminated runoff. 

The whole of the Undercity was soaked in it. Places like these, where people couldn’t pretend it wasn’t, emptied out in a hurry. 

Good spot to set up a secret lab, Reno thought, for somebody higher up on Shinra’s payroll. Grunts didn’t know the annual vaccine boosters offered by the company came loaded with a bonus cocktail meant to slow the onset of mako poisoning. 

Everybody knew the shakes were a slum disease. Bad water, bad genes. Nobody thought squat about the permanent haze suspended over the reactors. 

He didn’t. His chances of living long enough for a degenerative disease to take him down were slim to none.

“Heads up, boss,” he said quietly to the earpiece jacked into his phone. “Three comin’ up from the south at a clip.” 

“Confirmed. I’m going up and over.”

The headlights blinked out and Reno narrowed his eyes. The engines stayed running. “Fellas, it looks like you know the place.”

He kept his focus on the new arrivals rather than Tseng’s progress through the compromised rigging overhead. 

The creeping damage wrought by the steamy chemical soup under the plate wasn’t the sudden sucker punch of a topside windstorm. Down below, maintenance crews handled residential areas first, everything else second; what came second was put off until tomorrow, next week, next month. 

Minutes later, Tseng dropped lightly onto the roof, his death by misadventure put off another hour, another day. 

“The majority appears to have been smuggled out by Hojo’s people,” Tseng said.

“He ain’t that dumb.” 

SOLDIER’s failures as much as its successes ensured the mad scientist had free reign to do as he pleased, as long as he delivered results. Reno didn’t want to even try imagining what could be worth the risk of going behind Shinra’s back when Hojo’s experiments on fetuses and newborns were already greenlit. 

“What d’you wanna do with these guys?”

“Let Heidegger handle it. We have what we need.”

They moved from the collapsing rooftop and made for Sector 6. Their black suits garnered more attention there than Plateside only because the salarymen who visited Wall Market to unwind were regarded as targets of one sort or another. For most, that was part of the thrill. 

Over noodles in spicy sauce and beer, Reno said, “So, the VP, huh.”

“It would appear so.”

Reno leaned back, said, “Huh,” again. 

Rufus Shinra was an intriguing little tidbit Reno never had the chance to sink his teeth into. He knew the official bio as well as the unofficial one, and he thought they would get along if they had the opportunity to spend some time together. He also thought they’d probably try to kill each other—Rufus deliberately and himself as a natural consequence of being who he was—which in his opinion would only add to the experience.

* * *

Tossing Rufus’s Junon residence some time later only added strength to Reno’s theory.

Reno kept an apartment in Sector 8 and quarters in the Tower. The former was furnished with quality knockoffs, purposefully cluttered, and spoke of interests far more varied than most who met Reno in passing would assume. 

He was a voracious reader of thrillers, romance, and modern philosophy, and found surprising truths buried in all three. Science and the natural order of the world bored him to tears, but he had a fondness for taking things apart, meddling specifically with how things were meant to work, and putting them back together in ways frequently more effective than their intended purpose. 

By fate’s count, he had run up an impressive tab of near misses. It was fortunate he didn’t believe in fate or destiny or the grand plans of the universe. 

Conversely, Rufus appeared to embrace the concept of meant to be, if only to ensure what was meant aligned with his intent. His suite of rooms in Junon were as immaculate as those in Midgar, though supposedly he lived in the Junon suite. Aside from the few condiments in the fridge and a single toothbrush in the bathroom, there wasn’t much to prove it. 

“What the hell is wrong with him?”

That wasn’t for Tseng to say. “Given his activities, I would think he expected his living quarters to be among the first searched.”

Reno flung his arms dramatically wide. “That don’t explain this!”

Tseng regarded the cold, impersonal space. The bedside table contained the usual assortment of lubricants and sex toys, and though the collection leaned heavily toward penetrative, they somehow retained the same detached air as everything else. 

“No, it doesn’t,” Tseng decided. “The VP is aloof and distant at the best of times. This speaks to something else.”

“Fuck if I wanna know what.”

Reno did want to know. Maybe they could trade stories over a beer.

* * *

Elena sat at the bar drinking whiskey straight. She kept one eye on the bartender and the conspicuously steady stream of tips he brought in, and one on her target, a sloppy drunk with deep pockets and an abiding desire to avoid sleeping in his own bed. She hadn’t decided yet the best way to squeeze the truth out of him.

Reno, she knew, would take the obvious route. Drop in on the shared table obnoxiously, drop unstable hints about who he was and what he wanted. People would start to clear out quickly after that. 

Rude’s methods would be as obvious as Reno’s. He would’ve clocked the target had a big mouth and an overcooked noodle for a backbone twenty seconds in. He would watch silently from the shadows, corner the target in a back alley with whoever was unlucky enough to be his friend, and lie about how this didn’t have to get messy. 

She didn’t know what Tseng would do, not having worked with him as frequently. She imagined it would be an interesting combination of the other two, blatant in unexpected ways and neat, a quiet and deadly sort of calm. Reno and Rude were firestorms and shrapnel, clammy fear, bravado broken like bones. 

Tseng was a sliced throat and disdain for the urine puddling at a dead man’s feet. 

Having chosen her cliche, she skimmed off her tie and unbuttoned her collar, fluffed her modest tits into a prime time special. She drained her drink to the dregs and took the empty glass along as a hint. 

Pantomiming a trip to the bathroom interrupted by a double take was for her own amusement more than veracity. The ink on her ID card was fresh, the desire to prove she deserved it lifelong. 

“Hey,” she said, a low-level employee made bold by too much drink as she dropped her elbows on the table, maybe sweet on the outside but willing to do what it took to climb the corporate ladder, “hey, I know you! Mr. Bigwig over on forty-three!” 

Rene Semczyszyn, head of Procurement and Resources in Weapons Development, gawped stupidly. He had a straightforward career history, a bleeding ulcer, and two degrees that proved he wasn’t as stupid as he looked. Seven years spent working under Scarlet had obliterated his ability to regard women as anything but unattainable. He went through girlfriends like tissues and made love to gloryholes; his last attempt at a relationship ended when she got tired of sleeping with a jellyfish. 

Elena smiled into his dazzled eyes and went to work.

* * *

“I’m flattered by your interest, Mr. Vice President,” said Gale.

“As I see it, what you’ve done is possible only with Shinra resources. Did you think I wouldn’t be interested in my own property?”

Gale had measured the man against his reputation several times since their first meeting, and found himself doing so yet again. When news of Rufus’s confrontation with their man in engineering had reached him, he had been glad to have prepared already for the worst. 

Months later, the worst had yet to manifest. He continued to doubt all Rufus’s professed motives save a mutual discontent with President Shinra’s priorities. 

“You’re well aware by now we have no intention of following Shinra’s business model,” he said. 

“Just as you’re aware I can’t allow you to deviate so sharply from it.”

“Once the infrastructure is in place--”

“Exactly,” Rufus said, tapping the table sharply with a finger. “Putting the power in the hands of the people sounds very noble. But I wonder how your people will feel when they discover how deeply you’ve disrupted their way of life.”

That Rufus loathed his father as deeply as he loved his father’s city was clear. Gale remained certain in his assumption that Rufus meant to save it from his father’s neglect by any means necessary. 

His first mistake had been to believe their understanding of what it meant to save the city meshed. His second, that any means necessary contained an unspoken limit. 

“You can’t effect meaningful change while seeking to preserve the status quo,” Gale said.

“On the contrary. More importantly, people are terrible judges of their own happiness and therefore useless in determining a path toward it. That, Mr. Gale, is Shinra’s purpose.”

* * *

The house on Fenired Avenue was furnished in a manner consistent with its upper middle class neighbourhood. The front walk was regularly swept, and junk mail never gathered in an unseemly pile outside the door. The car occasionally parked in the driveway instead of the garage displayed a parking pass for Shinra Lot D.

Like most houses on this street, it was quiet during the day. Throughout the night as well, but as evening closed in the windows lit up predictably as the residents moved from kitchen to den, den to bedroom. They weren’t a particularly sociable family, which a certain type of career Shinra tended to be. If questioned, their neighbours would cite the clean front walk as proof of upstanding citizenship.

“Always wondered what it’d be like livin’ in a place like this,” Reno said. 

Tseng sat at the kitchen table, the guts of three handguns spread neatly out on a soft blanket. The blanket, faded and smeared with grey-black streaks, saw only slightly less use than the first floor powder room. 

“Then I got to wonderin’ why I wondered, y’know? Was it ‘cause I ain’t never had it? Or ‘cause everybody else wants it, so I figure I should too.”

Tseng remained focused on his work, the rise and fall of Reno’s voice a pleasant white noise. 

“You live in the slums long enough and by the time you make it Plateside, you think you got it all figured out.”

Reno wandered away from the window and began digging through the cupboards. Dry goods. Ration packets. Dehydrated pre-cooked meats. A handful of spice tins three months out from the best before date.

“But you don’t got shit. Not any shit that matters and you don’t even know it, ‘cause you got no fucking clue what it means for something to matter, anyway.

“And that there’s the real kicker. You go your whole goddamn life with this concept of value not even thinkin’ to question it. The second you do, the whole works goes crashing down. Bam, right around your fuckin’ ears. Now you gotta figure out what the hell value means for your own self.”

The bread he found stuffed in the freezer was a little frostbitten but in better shape than the severed pinky finger rattling around in a mason jar beside it. 

“Hey boss, who’s this?”

Metal slid against metal. Tseng shook his head. He didn’t recognise it. 

“Huh.”

As Tseng slid the last magazine home, Reno leaned close to trade a plate of fragrant slum special curry for his reassembled weapon. His hair brushed Tseng’s cheek. “Thanks for cleaning my piece.”

“My pleasure,” Tseng said, setting everything aside to turn his attention to their meal. Some would take as Reno’s most remarkable skill the ability to take trash and turn it into gold, but only if they were too blind to see Reno had done it to himself first. “Tell me what you value, Reno.”

Reno talked to pass time. Tseng listened to do the same.

* * *

The underground warehouse, as Rude’s single circuit assessment suggested it to be, was so utterly impervious to sound Rufus had dared to hope for a few nights of undisturbed sleep. No matter how loud and busy the city, its noise had never reached the upper floors of the Tower where Rufus had lived the majority of his life.

Rude did not share this opinion, and so when his internal clock signalled time to rest—Gale had elected to not provide them with any way to track the hours outside meals—and Rufus made ready for bed, he catnapped on the couch. 

“Rude.”

“Sir,” Rude said in exactly the same tone as before Rufus spent a night testing how quickly he roused from sleep. 

“Come to bed.”

“Sir,” respectfully declined.

“You’re snoring.”

“Sir,” dubiously said.

Rufus sighed. “Consider not only would we both rest easier, you’d be in a much better position to do your job.”

A telling silence, a slow breath, and the slide of cotton against leather. The rush of air when Rude lifted the duvet sent a shiver skittering across icy skin.

“Excellent,” Rufus said, and shifted close to the warm welcome that was Rude’s solid weight. “I was chilled.”

You could have said so, Rude didn’t say, which helpfully eliminated the need for Rufus to reply, I wanted to see what you would do.

Seeing to the Vice President’s comfort wasn’t included in the Turks standard job description. Neither were standards in general, nor an actual job description of any kind.

Rude wondered if Rufus knew how much he made up as they went along.

* * *

Tseng frowned at the paper to-go cup of coffee in his hands. The car rocked gently as traffic rushed by, lights haloed in the rain speckled window. He sat in the backseat with Reno, Elena behind the wheel twisted sideways with her knee up on the centre console.

Their options were limited. 

In their favour, President Shinra remained unaware his son was missing. Failing to recover the Vice President before it became necessary to inform him would lead to questions Tseng preferred remain unasked. 

He had questions of his own in need of answers. 

“If we assume the VP meant for us to be his failsafe, then we assume his goal is not to eliminate this group.”

“He’s trying to work with them,” Elena said. 

“Or they got somethin’ he wants.” Light and shadow slid through the compact malevolence in the narrow slits of Reno’s eyes. “And he don’t want anybody else to know it.”

“Anyone,” Tseng said, “but us. I would like to know how he acquired our tech.”

“Sticky fingers down the toilet didn’t have shit to say.” 

Tseng nodded. “Blind relays. It would seem the VP has been paying close attention to our methods.

“Elena, call a second car to pick us up. We’ll go through Rufus’s double ems at HQ. Reno, head for Sector 8 and be ready to deal with anyone we identify.”

“Sir.” Elena wore a Shinra double special and her rookie pride. “Wouldn't it be faster if I investigate the VP’s suspected facilities? We’re already down by one.”

“It would, but I need you to coordinate the two companies of Regulars I’m going to appropriate. A general inner plate sweep will cover our focus nicely.”

Inside the plate was a surrealistic honeycomb of spastic hallways and doorless forgotten rooms, all created by schematics adjusted and readjusted and stabilizers thrown up in a panic. Still, it took relatively little effort to find a well-trod path. The catch was stumbling into what had blazed that path in the first place.

Reno tipped his head back. “Better them than us.”

* * *

Tseng sat in the pleasant office of a meets-expectations career Shinra employee comfortable with steady income and mid-level pressure. The lights were on, the blinds open. It smelled of a chemical freshness suggesting its occupant extended more than a passing courtesy to the night staff.

“Hello, Mr. Mehta,” he said. 

Mr. Mehta yelped and stumbled against the doorframe. He clutched at his chest, wrinkling his wife’s favourite onwards and upwards tie. “Good god, man!” 

Slow worry pinched his brow. “...did we have an appointment?”

Tseng offered his apologies without specifics. “I require your paperwork for Schedule H3-7498.”

“Well,” said Mr. Mehta. He never could remember file designations outside the cheat sheet taped to his blotter. “Alright.”

He set his case down on his desk and went to the sideboard for paperwork not yet uploaded to the mainframe. He shuffled folders, made noise, pinched his bottom lip. He couldn’t think of a reason why someone would want access to a rote document not due to be archived for another three days. Neither could he think of a reason why he shouldn’t reduce his workload by one. 

“Director Hojo,” he said, locating the form. He pulled the stapled pages free and quickly handed them over. Clammy sweat prickled beneath his armpits. “It didn’t-- Nothing went wrong, did it?”

“Why would you suspect so?”

No one without access to the system could produce documents that once completed and reuploaded wouldn’t trigger an alert. Everything that came out inevitably went back in, unless it didn’t, which also triggered an alert. 

“Sir,” Mr. Mehta said, “I don’t question the transfers,” or the arrival of a man he didn’t know looking for paperwork he didn’t remember processing, but it sat in his pile so he must have, “I just approve them.”

The Shinra Building welcomed hundreds of people daily. Not one had ever been found somewhere they weren’t supposed to be. 

Tseng didn’t file the required competence inquiry against Mr. Mehta. A rubber stamp man would be useful in the future.

* * *

“Intriguing,” Rufus said.

Gemini pushed forward another diagram. “And here. Not only can spillover be significantly reduced, what isn’t eliminated can be reprocessed. Your output per gallon can safely be increased by seventy-five percent.”

“What does our Mr. Gale think of your proposal?”

Passion clashed with propriety. Uncomfortable for the first time in Rufus’s presence since discovering he had much more than a working knowledge of Shinra’s reactors, she hesitated. 

“You’re here because you believe our model is unsustainable,” Rufus said, “not because you believe in his.”

“That’s not,” she stuttered, “that’s not it at all.”

“What is it, then?”

She bought time by gathering up her works spread out on the dining table. “You’re not like I thought you’d be.”

Rufus laughed warmly. “I never am.”

“How do you—” She shook her head. “Never mind. That’s not important.”

He understood Gemini’s desire to downplay the potential in the reprocessing chamber her designs presented. With significant expense, output would definitely increase by her stated margin. With a less conservative stance, it could be up to three times more.

“People,” she began, “are quick to make mistakes. Bureaucracy doesn’t guarantee those mistakes will never be made, but it slows change down long enough to make that more likely.”

“Are you saying my company is ineffective, Gemini?” he teased. 

As boldly as she had walked in, she said, “Yes. It’s too large to be anything else.”

That she was correct irritated. He hid it with a boyish smile. “Things will be different when I’m in charge. Civilization can’t afford to lose the progress made possible by mako power.”

She searched his face for the lie, smart enough to expect one but not astute enough to suspect he rarely bothered to try when people were eager to accept half-truths coloured by their own expectations.

“If I tell you where the prototype is,” she began.

* * *

Reno stood propped against a weeping brick wall. He smoked unhurriedly as he watched the action across the street.

The Wishing Tree was an optimistic name for a mediocre apartment complex. It boasted supplemented rent and on-site daycare for busy young professionals attempting to build a family on an entry-level salary. Butting up against No. 1’s perimeter fence, residents were guaranteed a power supply free of pesky construction interruptions and an exciting uncertainty regarding early childhood development and proximity to several hundred tons of mako.

“Think somebody woulda noticed the neighbours,” he muttered. But for a city of nine million souls, there were really only two types of people. One saw shit and raised a stink. The other ignored the smell and admired the roses. 

Ninety percent of the real estate inside a reactor ran fully automated to increase Shinra’s bottom line, though PR said it was to reduce instances of mako poisoning. How the fellas in 3F had managed to hack into the mainframe wasn’t Reno’s concern; what information they had managed to syphon off theoretically was. 

Reno took one last long suck on his cigarette before letting it drop and grinding it out beneath his heel. He sauntered across the road with the loose-limbed gait of an office drone motivated by happy hour, and jabbed ineffectually at the entryway keypad until the old lady on four finished putting her purse together and made her shaky way down the stairs to skewer him with disapproval.

“Ma’am,” he said, groping at his splayed collar and ducking his head shamefacedly.

Up the stairs and down the hall, he banged on the door to 3F and hollered the name of the mom and pop retirement plan three blocks back in a heavy Wall Market accent. 

“You don’t wanna, s’cool,” he drawled, angling his body away from the door, “I eat any damn thing I don’t gotta pay for.” 

Shuffling footsteps preceded the flicker of a shadow beneath the door. In a split-second of focus, Reno tapped the cuff on his forearm and sparked a controlled burst of flame. 

“Shit, shit, _fuck_ ,” yelled somebody not yet on fire.

* * *

Elena stank of smoke, shit, and blood. Her face mask itched with sweat. Tired and incredibly irritated, she decided to take her frustration out on the very next target that presented itself.

Regulars, she discovered, excelled at following orders. Once instructed and unleashed, they were inexorable in their duty. If tasked with beating down a mountain with their bare hands, she had no doubts it would eventually be reduced to rubble. 

But when encountering a situation outside their specific orders, their critical thinking skills were nonexistent. Clearing the entire plate herself had begun to sound much less exhausting than coordinating several dozen squads of mindless drones. 

Her radio squawked. With a placid sort of danger lurking about her face, she listened to the static-ridden chatter. 

“All units,” she said twice, “five through seventeen fall back to recon point C and fan north. Twenty through twenty six hold position. Everyone else maintain.”

Squad leaders acknowledged in perfect sequential order. Certain in her belief not one soldier would make a move short of imminent death or the plate collapsing beneath their feet, she headed east toward the next unmarked hallway. 

Occasional eddies of smoke signalled a fresh burn before the warning crackled over her radio. She dropped into a couch and yanked her jacket over her head, braced against the aero rush that pushed flyaway ash up through the vents. Between each gust she counted the seconds. When she hit sixty without another interrupting blast and the all clear signaled, she shook off her jacket and stood. 

She wondered if she could put in for a bonus. Inside the plate had never been so free of infestation.

It would last a month.

* * *

The silence had changed.

Rufus sat at one end of the sofa with the financial section of yesterday’s newspaper. Rude, who had clocked the shift five minutes prior, sat at the other reading a copy of _Midgar Drivers_. He had never owned a car in his life. If he had the opportunity, he thought he might like to take the S-550 for a drive down the coast. 

“You don’t seem concerned,” Rufus said. 

“No point in getting worked up over what I don’t know.”

Uncertainty was generally what plagued people most. “How novel.”

Folding the paper neatly, Rufus set it aside and rose. “I appreciate your patience in this endeavour of mine.”

Rude shrugged. 

“Come now. I know what’s said about my temper, but you of all people should have nothing to fear from me.” Rufus spread his hands. “I’m entirely unarmed.”

“Would my opinion change anything?”

“Possibly.”

Up inched Rude’s eyebrow. 

“Probably not.”

Rude nodded, his gaze already returned to the magazine. 

Rufus paced to the edge of the light and back again. His life contained a fixed amount of unpredictability he made peace with via a clear path of if and when. He had assumed this placed him in a position of control by default. 

As he had watched Rude sit calmly surrounded by nothing but uncertainty, he reconsidered the notion, the entire concept of what it meant to be in control. He thought to ask Rude for an opinion regardless. 

The world exploded into light. He hit the floor with Rude at his back and a serene, “Stay down,” whispered hot in his ear. 

“Two-four,” a woman called out untenable minutes later.

“Five-eight,” Rude replied, smoothly rolling upright with a hand held out to Rufus. “Good to see you.”

Ash fell from Elena’s tousled hair as she nodded. “Sir.”

“I take it everyone has fled?” Rufus asked.

“No sign anyone was ever here,” she said, “except for,” and indicated where they stood. 

“Rude, radio Tseng the location Gemini provided. He and Reno should be able to take it easily.” To Elena, he said, “Does whatever caused this mess require your immediate attention?”

“What do you need, sir?”

Rufus smiled with all the charm and generosity of a newfound religion.

* * *

Sector 2 housed Midgar’s elite. At one time, that had meant the dozens of scientists and engineers who had made the city in the sky a reality. Now it meant whoever could afford the property taxes. Few were both.

“Impressive,” Tseng said, served warmed sake by Rufus’s hand in the comfortable minimalism of a condo exactly seven, now eight, people were aware existed. 

“I’m glad you think so.” 

The papers were all in Tseng’s family name. Finding it was appropriately challenging but not impossible, guaranteeing anyone who did a sense of accomplishment outweighing its actual value. That it fit so neatly with Tseng’s most obvious and equally trivial idiosyncrasy was a point of pride. 

“Now that you’re aware of this little nest,” Rufus said as he sat, “I do hope you’ll visit.”

“That would be unwise.”

“Ah, the words I’d been waiting to hear.”

“I would have said them much sooner had you given me the chance.” Tseng sampled the sake out of curiosity. “And now that I have, do you intend to inform me of your future plans before executing them? Or should I look forward to the surprise.” 

“When I first discovered what you were up to, I had thought to offer an alliance of sorts. Your loyalties seemed... flexible.”

Rufus sat forward to set his cup on the table, resting an elbow on his knee as he turned it slowly on the glass. He had shed his coat just inside the door, his jacket between the kitchen and the sofa. The high-necked black sweater he wore beneath was thin and soft, with thick cuffs that drew attention to the fine bones of his wrist.

“Instead, consider this an audition,” he said. 

Finding the drink to his taste, Tseng sipped again. The air held more the weight of a confessional than of a stage, and so he waited. 

“I have a speech prepared,” Rufus said. “Would you like to hear it?”

“I suppose that depends.”

“On?”

“Is it for me, or for you?”

Rufus stared at him blankly, and then, laughing as he raised a hand to his face, he fell back against the cushions. “I deserved that.”

Tseng offered the smallest of smiles behind the rim of his cup. 

“I admit there were easier, more straightforward means to my end. But,” Rufus held up a finger, “would it have been as much fun? For either of us.”

“Fun,” Tseng echoed, appreciative of Rufus’s clever wordplay even as he was incredibly exhausted by it. 

“Look at you, Tseng. You’re right in front of them and they can’t even see you.” Rufus’s honeyed tone soured by disgust, his face twisted into something ugly and captivatingly honest, he shoved to his feet. “He’s squandered more than enough already. I see the potential here and I mean to use it before my inheritance becomes a ruin.” 

“And then?” 

“Is it better to be loved rather than feared, or feared rather than loved,” Rufus said. “A philosophical question you’re no doubt familiar with. Those in power frequently choose fear.” He paused, corrected, “Those who remain in power. Love is fickle, fear is constant.” 

Tseng nodded for Rufus to continue and held his peace. 

“What if what you fear is what you love?”

“Popular opinion would hold that impossible.”

Rufus’s eyes took on the darkness of a man seduced. “People exist in constant fear of losing what they love. In misery, too afraid to reach for what could be love.”

“I see.” Tseng turned the cup in his fingers over to rest on his palm and lifted his hand. “If you would?”

* * *

“Gonna be like that now, huh,” Reno said as Tseng stepped out into the sunlit murk.

Rarely did Tseng have the pleasure of blunt speech. “Yes, Reno,” tasted pathologically sweet on his tongue. “It is.”

“Huh,” Reno said. 

He slid away from the wall and looked up, up and up concrete and steel and glass, backstepping into the whipping wind. He smelled of smoke still, again, of blood and metal and sweat. Every day the city he woke to was different from the one the day before, the same as the one before that. 

Reaching into his jacket, he withdrew the last two Malboros to put to his lips, his lighter to spark them to life. He pulled lazily on both, then flipped one between his fingers and held it out. 

Tseng put his mouth where Reno’s had been, tasted a warmth he hadn’t before. Midgar didn’t have seasons, but here at the edge, the wind had bite.

* * *

  
End  


**Author's Note:**

> Find me on Twitter [@bluesoaring](https://twitter.com/bluesoaring), Discord @bluesoaring, and a semi-dead tumblr [bluesoaring](https://bluesoaring.tumblr.com/).


End file.
